He looks to the trunk one more time. “What’s the use? Like you said, I’ll never find it in there anyway.”

“No, you won’t.” Then she opens her top desk drawer and pulls out a single envelope. “Because it’s right here.”

Had she pulled out a stick of dynamite, it couldn’t have felt more dangerous.

“I went fishing for it the night you came back. I thought you might want it eventually.”

She hands it to him. His handwriting. The address where he grew up. On the back is the ripple of dried saliva where he licked it closed two years ago. He cannot yet tell if this letter is an enemy or a friend.

But now that he’s holding it in his hand, there’s something he knows beyond the shadow of any doubt.

God help me . . . before this is all over, I’m going to face them. I’m going to confront my parents. . . .

Part Two

* * *

Here Be Dragons

From The Telegraph:

GIRL SMUGGLED INTO BRITAIN TO HAVE HER “ORGANS HARVESTED”

By Steven Swinford, Senior Political Correspondent 10:00 PM BST 18 Oct 2013

The first case of a child being trafficked to Britain in order to have their organs harvested has been uncovered.

The unnamed girl was brought to the UK from Somalia with the intention of removing her organs and selling them on to those desperate for a transplant. . . .

The case emerged in a government report which showed that the number of human trafficking victims in the UK has risen by more than 50 per cent last year and reached record levels. . . .

Child protection charities warned last night that criminal gangs were attempting to exploit the demand for organ transplants in Britain.

Bharti Patel, the chief executive of Ecpat UK, the child protection charity, said: “Traffickers are exploiting the demand for organs and the vulnerability of children. It’s unlikely that a trafficker is going to take this risk and bring just one child into the UK. It is likely there was a group.”

According to the World Health Organisation as many as 7,000 kidneys are illegally obtained by traffickers each year around the world.

While there is a black market for organs such as hearts, lungs and livers, kidneys are the most sought after organs because one can be removed from a patient without any ill effects.

The process involves a number of people including the recruiter who identifies the victim, the person who arranges their transport, the medical professionals who perform the operation and the salesman who trades the organ . . .

The full article can be found at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/10390183/Girl-smuggled-into-Britain-to-have-her-organs-harvested.html

7 • Sky Jockey

Trouble in the world, trouble at home. How can they expect a man to concentrate on his work with all this trouble? AWOLs wreaking havoc everywhere, clappers blowing things up—and then, of course, there’s my daughter. I thought she was finally wising up, getting a good head on her shoulders—and now she does this? What is she thinking?

“Earth to Frank!” the foreman’s voice booms over the intercom, startling him. “Are you on this freaking planet?”

“Yeah, I’m here. Are we ready?”

“Ready? We’ve been waiting here twiddling our thumbs. Start hoisting already!”

“Starting the hoist. Clear the area around the payload.”

“The arm’s clear. I’ll alert the media.”

Frank chuckles—because the foreman isn’t making a joke; he is literally alerting the media. They’re gathered around Liberty Island, cameras aimed upward at the statue, which is ensconced in construction scaffolding. It may be a momentous occasion to them, but to a crane operator, it’s just another job.

What the hell is my daughter thinking? How could she date such an obvious loser? She’s barely fourteen; what business does a fourteen-year-old from Queens have dating a sixteen-year-old delinquent from the Bronx?

“He’s got a good heart,” she tells me.

Fine. So rip it out and put it into another kid more deserving of her attention.

The cables go taut, and the new arm shifts on the barge, slowly, smoothly. This is not a job accomplished with cavalier speed. That’s the best way to wind up with snapped cables, dead coworkers, and lawsuits. Lots of lawsuits. The arm begins to rise, as if being levitated by a magician. He mans the crane’s controls, feeling the cables attached to the massive unwieldy object as if they’re his own sinews and the crane itself is just an extension of his body.

The boyfriend is not too old to be unwound. Not yet. That freaking tool won’t be seventeen for at least a few months. And then if they repeal the Cap-17 law, there’s a whole year of potential unwinding tacked on to his miserable life. The problem is, the lowlife’s parents won’t do it. Of course they won’t! They’re probably druggies or worse. No supervision, no boundaries. If you don’t raise a kid right, it turns into a weed that’s gotta be torn out. The whole damn thing is their fault!

“Frank! Jesus! What’s going on up there? Keep it steady!”

“I’m on it. It’s the wind.”

“So compensate! The last thing we need is the freaking arm lying crushed at the freaking base of the statue like a dead freaking whale!”

There are cameras mounted on the crane, on the ground, and on the statue itself to monitor the arm as it rises, but the monitors don’t tell as clear a story as actually seeing the thing. Frank leans to the side, looking out of the huge glass windows of the sky crane, to see the arm twisting and torquing in the wind below. He adjusts the tension on the cables, like fiddling with a pair of venetian blinds, to get the torch and hand to take on a forty-five-degree angle. Now it rises with the torch slightly higher than the rest of the arm, and at this angle it catches the wind differently, rising more steadily. In a minute, it has risen past the height of the statue’s base. Now he pulls it in, the cable dolly bringing it closer to the statue.